A hot press-forming is a public technique to press a heated steel material in a hot state for forming automobile parts and the like. In addition, when quenching the material with a low-temperature press die(s) at the same time of the press-forming, it is possible to form a part that have excellent characteristics such as a high tensile strength and the like.
For heating a material, it is a common method to heat a material in a heating equipment such as a heating furnace, and the like; however, it will take approximately 3 to 5 minutes to heat a material up to 900 degrees C. in a heating furnace, for example, and the time is rather longer than a time required for a pressing step. It causes decrease in production efficiency because useless waiting time is necessary at the pressing step. Thus there is a demand to provide a method that can heat a material more rapidly.
One of methods for heating a material rapidly is a block heating method. This is a method to heat a steel plate material 21 to be heated, as shown in FIG. 10, by pressing and contacting a metal block 22, which have dimensions corresponding to the material 21 and is heated uniformly by electric heaters 20 provided therein, with the material 21 from an upper side. In particular, Patent Document 1 discloses a technique to contain a thermal diffusion plate inside a block to obtain a uniform temperature of a heating surface of the block as far as possible. Patent Document 2 discloses a heating equipment for heating a metal plate by transferring heat from a heat source such as a block heater to the metal plate via a heat conducting body.    [Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Kokai Publication No. JP-A-11-145166    [Patent Document 2] Japanese Patent Kokai Publication No. JP-P2006-110549A